by Avery Duff
Robert shrugged. “Dunno, they could’ve.”
“Maybe somebody come running by, had to ditch it real quick.”
“It’s Troubletown, right?” Robert asked.
“Fleeing felon in Troubletown, happens every day. But one thing, jefe. Guy should’ve known blue cans are for paper and plastic. Green cans’re for grass.”
Robert tried not to smile and said, “Guy like that wouldn’t wear Peter Pan shoes like yours, right? Shoes everybody remembers.”
“Even bangin’ as these are, I doubt it.”
“What kind of cut do guys take for moving things like that?”
“Guy’s gonna say he’s taking twenty, thirty percent, winds up takin’ half. But doin’ it for a little girl like Delfina? Guy’d hafta be un monstruo to take anything . . .”
CHAPTER 15
The church grounds filled half a city block in Ocean Park, a half mile from the beach, but Teo’s walk from Carlos’ house brought him to a ground-floor room inside the church’s annex. That’s where he sat now, at an AA meeting in a mini-mart-size room. A table held fifteen, twenty people, all of them strangers, adults of different ages, and once the meeting started, everyone introduced themselves, first names only, and declared they were alcoholics.
That’s what he did when his turn came: “My name is Teo, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hello, Teo,” everyone said back.
It was hard to know why their simple words held so much comfort, but they settled him down and gave him confidence.
Today’s meeting leader had already picked one of the twelve steps to discuss. A young man who hugged himself, he looked like he worked in movies with his tinted lenses and tipped hair. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered here except you were here and hadn’t had a drink since the last meeting. On both counts, Teo qualified.
Waiting to share for his first time anywhere, Teo recalled a kid at his first AA meeting. Once the teenager heard the rules, he’d whispered: “Dude? Not drink. Do they mean not drink at all?”
“Think so.”
“Too much red tape,” the kid said, and split.
Teo tried to pay attention to this meeting leader’s share: his anger, his everyday problems that looked easy to solve by drinking alcohol, the value of going to meetings without needing a reason—just go. Cool that he didn’t talk like he was someone important but like anyone who’d messed up his life. Like every person in the room, and that comforted Teo, too.
The time came for others to share, no more than two minutes per person.
Nearly last in line, Teo sat with his eyes closed, head bowed, waiting. He knew he wasn’t respecting what others were sharing, but raw emotion had bubbled up inside him ever since he’d learned about Carlos’ death.
Before knowing that, he’d wondered what he’d say to Carlos in the courtroom. Exactly what? What would Carlos look like now? Would Carlos turn his back, shame him in front of his daughter?
Did Carlos know that his own brother had broken into his home and stolen from him to buy his Ford truck? No matter that he did it for Delfina. No matter it was to get her away from those badass people downtown. No matter that he wasn’t drinking when he did it. Back then, anything would’ve been better than asking Carlos for help, even going to jail for B and E. But now Carlos was dead.
Like he’d tried telling Robert: the shame he’d felt about facing Carlos was gone and made way for good things like forgiveness. Like gratitude. Good, positive things.
And Roberto, his lawyer. Boy, did I luck out meeting him.
Not like lawyers he’d met in the system. Tough like them, sure, but Robert didn’t look past you like they did. Grew up on a farm, maybe that was why. How many lawyers would sit down with him outside Carlos’ house, tell him to come inside, and do it for his own good?
He knew Robert wasn’t a saint, that Delfina had roped him into helping them. That was okay. Okay, too, that soon enough he and Delfina would part ways with Robert and Gia—the way of the world.
But if it weren’t for Robert, he wouldn’t have gone inside Carlos’ office. After Robert left him alone at the desk where his brother had died, no doubt about it—he’d been afraid. Shaking and ashamed in the room where his brother took his last breath. Looking around at Carlos’ computer, his brother’s glass desk with no drawers, a few puzzle books in the bookshelves, those big doors out to a garden, and those posters and prints leaning against the far wall.
The puzzle books—like the ones Teo’d grab from Carlos and throw in the garbage or tear up in front of him. He wondered if Carlos had held on to any of them, with his name and address printed neat in the front like always.
Seeing all of it had driven him from Carlos’ chair to his knees. He’d cried out. To ask his brother to forgive him. As his face touched the floor, he felt like his stomach had pulled up inside his lungs, his throat too tight to speak. How long he was on the floor, he didn’t know. But when he lifted his face, he saw everything he needed to see in this world. Right across from him—against that wall. After that, everything had been clear, and his mind had flooded with long-muted memories of Carlos.
Then he heard his name in the AA meeting. Saw it was his turn to share.
“I know this is off topic for today’s step, but my brother died not too far back, and I need to talk about it. We didn’t get along. I was bigger’n he was, and I bullied him. He was real smart, and he picked on me in his own way, every chance he got. But . . .”
Closing his eyes, he kept talking, picturing himself with Carlos, back seat of that car, his parents in front, and describing what he pictured to the meeting. How what he pictured made him feel about his brother. He kept talking till he had nothing left to say.
When he opened his eyes, he saw they’d let him run way over his allotted two minutes. Around the table, a few people were crying; others looked at him, clearly touched.
As the meeting ended, several people told him his share had been powerful and thanked him for it. He thanked them for the meeting. For being here, and he hoped what he’d said might help someone else.
Across the room, he noticed an older guy with short white hair, thinning on top. The man nodded to him, and Teo nodded back. Something like knowledge passed between them.
Out in the parking lot, Teo caught up with the white-haired man.
“Said your name was Benny, right?”
“That’s right, Teo.” Remembering his name.
“How long you been sober?” Teo asked.
“Twenty-eight years and change,” Benny said.
“Any way you’d think about being my sponsor?”
“I’m big on walking,” Benny said. “Want to walk around the block?”
“Need to call my daughter first. That okay with you?”
CHAPTER 16
When Alexandra called Kiril, he drove to Ocean Park and found her at a bus stop, not far from Santa Monica College. Once she was in the Lexus’ back seat, the car moving again, she asked if they’d bought her a Subway, too.
“Want this?” Kiril offered her the last half of his.
“Like mine toasted,” she said, waving it away.
Then she told him Teo had gone into a church not far from here.
“Going to pray?” Penko said. “Good idea for him today.”
“Not to pray,” she told him.
She’d followed him inside. He went into a room for some kind of meeting.
“About a half hour ago,” she said.
Kiril drove where she told him to go and parked where they could see the annex door Teo had used. Then more waiting.
Kiril asked Alexandra, “What are you reading?”
“A college course catalog.” She mentioned a course about geology. “Introductory course. They study different rocks, all the formations, take field trips. We live near San Andreas Fault, and one day, whoof, it’s gonna be very bad.”
“Have special college deal for prostitutka?” Penko asked her.
“Neh. But a course for lai
narl only, starting next semester.” Calling him a shithead.
“Get out,” Kiril told her, his voice sharp.
She slid out. He did, too, and motioned her to him.
“My life is difficult already,” he said. “You understand?”
“Life always difficult.”
“Next time you want to mess with him, go ahead. And next time, I will not stop him.”
Tears filled her eyes; she looked down. “Maybe next time I start to run and keep running.”
Kiril saw that man, Teo, coming out of the church annex. Not alone. With a white-haired man. The pair crossed a parking lot. The man and Teo stopped, and Teo made a call on his cell phone.
Kiril told Alexandra, “If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water.”
A Bulgarian proverb that fit her situation. And his own. He reached over, wiped her eyes.
“The girl, Ilina. Have her call me, dobre?”
She nodded, reversed her blue jacket to red, and zipped it up. He reached inside the car for a Dodgers cap and snugged it onto her head.
“Ilina, you like her?” she asked.
He stared at her until she said, “Dobre, I tell her to call you.”
They watched Teo heading down a quiet residential street with the older man. Alexandra, head down, started after them. Then she turned back around. Raised her hand so that her limp little finger pointed at the ground.
“Him,” she said, meaning Penko.
Penko can’t get it up, she was telling him. In its own way, that made perfect sense.
A half block away, a Town Car stopped. Its lights flashed. Kiril walked over.
The darkened rear window rolled partway down, revealing a thin-faced man with hair dyed jet-black, oiled, and swept straight back like a ’50s car fin: Gospodar, the clan leader from San Bernardino. Beside him, Kiril could make out bulbous breasts in a cinched-up leather bustier—Pinky. Gospodar’s woman, Penko’s aunt. No mistaking her sharp perfume that clung to him even outside the car.
“Gospodar, what brings you out this way?”
“Your phone locator had you two blocks away.”
Kiril checked his settings, handed his phone to Gospodar. He knew better than to lean down and look inside. But if he had to guess, two other people sat in front, still another in back.
Kiril shrugged. “Locator is always on. I don’t know what happened.”
“Technology.” Gospodar handed back his phone. “Where is the best surf and turf near ocean?”
“For steak, I hear BOA, over by pier. Seafood, try Ivy at Shore, or Enterprise Fish, just for the fish and the price. For surf and turf together, I cannot say.”
“Dobre,” Gospodar said. “It is time now for the other thing. Make it happen.”
“Da, Gospodar.”
The car drove away. Kiril walked back to the Lexus, grabbed a large stiff envelope from the trunk space, and got behind the wheel.
Opening the envelope, Penko asked, “Leyla Pinky, she riding with Gospodar?” Aunt Pinky.
Tits and all. “Da,” Kiril said, looking at the license plates and clear plastic zip ties.
They each took a tag and a few zip ties and got out. Halfway done putting these new plates over the owner’s, Kiril saw Teo and the older man round a corner, coming back. Thirty seconds after that, Alexandra showed up, strolling behind them. Kiril cinched the last zip tie in place and stood.
Hope she’s ready for business, he was thinking.
CHAPTER 17
Sunset at Venice Beach had bathed Robert’s Ozone apartment in muted pink and melted orange, and as darkness fell, he glanced out the alley window for Reyes’ blue trash can pickup. The alley was deserted, and he returned to the two offering circulars, trying to figure out the trust’s last investments.
His phone rang; it was Gia.
“Hola, Roberto,” she said, calling him that sometimes when she felt the Latina side of her puzzle. When she was feeling Chinese, she’d ask, “Ni haw ma.” How you doing?
“Hola, chica,” he said, just because he liked the way it sounded.
Gia told him the two chicas had visited Gia’s law school, late afternoon, and made it home about a half hour ago.
“Teo called Delfina,” Gia said. “He wanted to pick up Chinese on his way home.”
“Where is he?”
“Didn’t say. He’s walking, I think.”
“Why not have it delivered?” he asked.
“Think about it.”
“Oh. She’s listening?” he asked.
“I don’t care what they say. You’re pretty sharp.”
Then he realized: If the food was delivered, he and Gia would pay, not Teo. This way, Teo paid for dinner, end of discussion.
“Showing us his appreciation,” he said to her.
“Yep. Pot stickers, chicken with snow peas. Sound right for you?”
“And half of whatever you ordered.”
“Lose that thought right now, big boy.”
Getting a rise out of her. The most generous person he knew; still, she didn’t like sharing her food.
“I’m from two cultures of scarcity,” she once told him. “You’re from a farm in the land of plenty.”
“You’re American,” he said.
“I run deep, amigo.”
Joking with him, but she did run deep. One of many reasons he loved her. Before he ever told her how he felt, she’d taught him how to say I love you in Chinese: Wo ai ni. She made him repeat it till he got it down. Both of them already knew how to say it in Spanish: Te amo.
“Wo ai ni. Just in case you ever need to use it,” she’d told him.
About a week later, he’d used it. First in English, then in Spanish, then in Chinese. Gia didn’t seem to mind his batting order, as long as he got the words right. She’d told him she loved him, too, in English, and had loved him for a long time. He didn’t try to nail down her time frame; she’d tell him when later, if she wanted. They weren’t in any hurry, and he knew what she meant by saying a long time—he’d been having those feelings since their boardwalk conversation about her visit to Dorothy’s house.
Now she said on the phone, “I’m alone now. Our girl’s getting antsy about her dad.”
“He just called, right?”
“Not seeing him, not knowing where he is, it bothers her.”
He remembered Delfina, earlier in the week, waiting for Teo at Gia’s front window.
“He’ll be there soon. I’m on my way.”
As Robert headed out the door, he saw Reyes parking by the trash cans in his girlfriend’s car. Saw him pull that bundled hashish from the blue can and heard two honks before he drove away.
Don’t honk! Robert was thinking. C’mon, man!
CHAPTER 18
Teo headed up a Santa Monica alley, still a couple of miles away from Gia’s house. To his left were parking lots for businesses fronting Wilshire; to his right a cinder-block wall. Teo felt like he was flying. Not light-headed. Light. Finally, he had a new AA sponsor, this Benny guy. Sober almost three decades, Benny had the same kind of pain Teo knew about. Similar bottle issues. Anger, resentment, an overbearing father, and enough screwups along the way to pave a freeway with excuses to drink.
“Every excuse under the sun,” Benny had said.
Teo’s drill with Benny: seven meetings a week, more if possible, keep a journal, and call Benny whenever he felt the urge to drink. All the right stuff, Benny called it.
A plastic bag filled with Chinese swung from his left hand, ginger and garlic scents swirling around him. On top of finding Benny, after Teo had left Carlos’ house, Robert had told him good news was on the way. Could be that father and daughter might be able to head indoors soon, sleeping in the truck a fond memory. A permanent address, Delfina enrolled in school, making friends. The truck, though, he’d keep it, use it for hauling and—
He slowed down his mind, thinking: Get too happy and pretty soon your disease starts sayin’, “Time to celebrate. Hey, you earne
d it, didn’t you?”
Thinking, too: Don’t get ahead of yourself, Teo. Be grateful. Don’t paint some rainbow picture for what’s ahead. Nothing’s gonna be easy about it. Delfina might have problems, the life she’s led. So keep it real, take it as it comes, one day at a time. Stay sober. Be grateful, not excited. Got it?
“Got it,” he said out loud.
Another hundred steps up the alley, it didn’t matter how hard he tried keeping an even keel. A wave of emotion hit him: remorse, joy, regret, and elation, and it brought him to tears. Crying, he laid his face against a green metal trash bin, this huge, raw day of his life seeping from his soul again—first in Carlos’ office, then at AA, now here.
He decided: Better I break down here than at Gia’s, where Delfina might see me.
Then he heard someone yelling. He looked up from the dumpster and saw an angry man waving a silver baseball bat at him.
Get out of here! he was saying, with some kind of accent. Go on! Get moving!
Teo held up both hands, “All right, man, no problem, all right.”
He stepped back into the alley, took twenty steps, and never heard it coming. But he felt the vehicle’s force wave behind him, bearing down, and as his powerful calves coiled, he sprang into the air.
CHAPTER 19
For the past two hours, Robert and Gia had been trying to distract Delfina. Anything to get her away from Gia’s front window, to help her stop obsessing about Teo.
“Where is he?” Delfina asked again.
“He was in Santa Monica,” Gia said.
“Where in Santa Monica?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What Chinese restaurant?”
Gia said, “I don’t know. He’ll be here. He was okay when you talked to him, wasn’t he?”
“Sometimes you can’t tell,” Delfina said. Then a flurry of other questions, but all asking the same one: Where is Daddy?
Robert and Gia weren’t sure. Robert had slipped into the bedroom and called Teo three times already, but his phone had gone straight to voice mail. Back in the living room, Gia was reading to Delfina near the front window. Headlights would pass. Delfina would look outside, even knowing Teo was on foot. Gia would coax her into a book again.